Watch Daniel learn Icelandic in 7 days

"I've never encountered anyone like this..."

"...he absolutely blew my mnd."

These remarks come from a British documentary called The Boy with the Incredible Brain. As language students, we all wish we could experience hyper-accelerated learning, because it would certainly save us a lot of time & effort.

I usually need to remind my frustrated language students, however, that their language-learning brain is more like a Muscle than a Computer, which means that, like a bodybuilder, they should expect their development to be a slow, gradual one and not an overnight phenomenon.

We can't expect our minds to perform complex functions instantaneously and without error like we can with a computer running a piece of software for the first time.

The vast majority of people don't have the capacity to process (and retain!) information at such a comparatively high rate; but in this clip from the documentary, watch at least what Daniel Tammet can do...

Does this young man have an elite gift for accelerated learning? Or is this an ability that's just dormant within the rest of us?